Six Months Later
“WELL?” Belinda asked, moving about the kitchen smoothly in spite of a growing bulge at her middle. Apparently Caden—who could now run around like a champion, chasing the adolescent orange tabby that Belinda had chosen for their house—had been such a sweetheart that she and Oscar had decided that they must start on a new one immediately.
Theo didn’t mind. He and Spencer had been spending five days a week working the cargo bay and the office for Gecko Inc. and helping Belinda decorate the guest room for little-boy Caden, as opposed to baby Caden, during their weekends. All that was about to change, though, and Theo was only a little anxious as he replied to Belinda’s question.
“Well, what?” But he knew.
“How’d he do?” she asked. Spencer had gone up in the air that day with their local flight certificatory. A one-hour trip, take-off and landing of a small cargo plane, and then the same for a helicopter. It was his final test after a series of them over the month, and Theo grinned at her.
“Can you imagine Spencer failing anything?”
She grinned. “Absolutely not. Yes! This is good. I made him a cake, you know.”
“He’ll be excited. He’s coming back with Damien tonight. In fact….” They both paused while the whomp-whomp-whomp of the Hummingbird’s propellers beat the air to the landing pad on the other side of Damien and Preston’s cottage. “There he is!”
“Are you going to go greet him?” she asked, dimpling. “Dinner’s not for a good two hours—you could go, you know, ask him about his day?”
She insinuated that last with a sweet little blush, and Theo fell in love with her all over again. “I could,” he said. “But it’s getting cold. This could be the last night we get to watch the sunset for quite some time.”
“Oh!” She held her hands to her chest. “Here, let me get you two beers. Colonel’s out tearing up the back by the firepit. You guys can go sit out there.”
Theo gave her a kiss on the cheek and took the beers from her as she pulled them from the refrigerator, and then he whistled for Colonel as he trotted through the back door and into the space between the house and the cottage, which had been designated as sort of a barbecue/common area for the three homesteads.
Once he’d passed that—and Preston and Damien’s cottage—he found Preacher and Colonel sitting and panting while Preston greeted Damien with a long, long hug.
And Theo strode up to Spencer, still in his flight suit, and kissed him square on the mouth.
Ah! Yes! Warm, happy, sarcastic man, with a definite edge of cocky pilot, which had been seeping back into Spencer’s taste over the last months.
Heady stuff, that. Theo couldn’t get enough of it.
“Beer, Woodchuck?” Spencer gasped as he came up for air. “Isn’t that a little forward?”
“The sunset, idiot! Go change out of your flight suit and meet me back here.”
“Oh!” Spencer’s grin went shy, and Theo fell in love with him for the hundredth time since that late March when the idiot had fallen out of the sky. “Okay. Yeah. Sure.”
He kissed Theo one more time for good measure and then turned to trot up the walk toward the trailer. He still had a limp in his stride—much like Damien’s, that would probably never go away. But he had so much of himself back too, and to Theo’s eternal gratitude, that cocky part of him that had gotten so lost after his injury seemed to want Theo as much as the vulnerable part of him that he fought so hard to hide.
“Don’t forget my sweatshirt!” Theo called after him, shivering a little as the October chill settled into the air.
He set the beers in the cup holders of two of the camp chairs by the fire pit, and to his surprise, Preston came over, two big logs in his arms.
“Grab some kindling,” he said, pointing to the small pile of it on the other side of the composite picnic table that he and Damien had installed that summer.
Theo did as asked, and by the time Spencer and Damien got back from changing, they had a cheerful fire going, but that didn’t mean Theo wasn’t grateful for the fleece hoodie Spencer had brought back with him.
Colonel, who had stayed dejectedly by Theo’s side as Spencer had gone to change, greeted him excitedly for a moment before Spencer sank gratefully into the camp chair and petted the animal’s giant head for five minutes, as well as giving scritches and good-dogs and general spoiling and love.
Colonel and Stupid had continued to be an item, snuggling at every opportunity when Colonel was in the house. But Colonel really was a working dog, and he accompanied Theo and Spencer to the hangar most days, to either sit at Theo’s feet while he worked or to follow Spencer as he organized deliveries. And now he’d be going with Spencer and Elsie as they went back to being the inseparable flight buddies they were made to be.
“So!” Theo demanded impatiently. “How’d the helicopter certification go?”
“He passed,” Damien said, interrupting them without compunction. “No worries. No fuss. He flew us home tonight. I’m surprised he didn’t tell you!”
Spencer grinned, obviously insufferably pleased with himself, and then reached for Theo’s hand. “Yes, I’m a genius pilot, and we all love me. But hush! We’re missing it!”
“Of course,” Theo said, looking at Damien and Preston meaningfully.
They nodded and sat, stretching their legs out to the fire and cracking their own beers while Theo sank down in the chair next to Spencer and rested his hand, palm up, for Spencer to lace fingers with him.
And with that touch, that warm and kind touch from the man he loved, the whole world held its breath.
Spencer and Theo—and Damien and Preston—looked up to the west, over the hills, as the orange sun sank into a luxurious pink and fluffy bed of clouds, and night pulled a purpling blanket over it in sleep.
For five minutes, there was nothing but the warmth of Spencer’s hand in his, Colonel’s patient breaths, and that breathtaking appreciation that they’d all seen another day come safely to a close.
When it was over, and they were left in twilight with the crackling fire at their feet, Damien broke the silence with a soft-voiced, “Amen,” and they all echoed him.
Spencer was the one who’d started that, the moment of holy gratitude for the sun and the moon and the stars and the sky. Glen, Damien, Elsie—even the two new pilots, who had come out here too over the summer—all seemed to hold the same reverence, and Theo wondered if it was one of those things that came with being a pilot, like the vulnerable hearts that Cash had talked about that long-ago, wonderful, terrible moment in the hospital.
Conversation started up then, and Preston and Damien disappeared to help Belinda and Oscar bring the food out to the picnic table. Damien paused to click on the electric pole light Preston had installed as well, and for a moment Theo and Spencer were the only ones out there under the chilly purple sky.
“Theo?” Spencer said softly.
“Yeah?”
“Back when we were starting out, I dreamed of this. You and me out here watching the sunset, having a beer, with Colonel at our feet.”
Theo’s smile went all the way to his eyes—to his heart. “Yeah?”
“It’s my favorite dream. Every day we can do this, it comes true.”
Theo closed his eyes. “God, I love you.”
“Me too.”
They held hands in the quiet then, listening to the crackle of the flames. The lovemaking would come later, after the family dinner, and it would be wonderful, as it always was between them.
But that moment—that perfect moment—was one of many that let Theo know that Spencer’s arrival into his life may have been a complete accident, but the relationship they’d forged and the life they’d been building together was anything but chance.
Happiness didn’t just fall out of the sky like random helicopter pilots. Theo and Spencer had needed to work long and hard for that elusive dream.
And every time they watched a sunset together, Theo gave thanks, once again, that their happiness had come true.